Freepik
It is impossible to imagine the modern world, which is rapidly evolving and seems to be accelerating time in its embrace of technological progress, without smartphones, tablets, powerful computers and other electronic gadgets, including high-speed Internet infrastructure and satellite communications.
At the same time, there is a large-scale transition from fossil to alternative energy sources, with the production of electric cars, wind and solar power plants, and a large number of innovative clean energy projects on the rise.
All these developments, as well as the advanced production of high-tech products, are impossible without the use of precious and rare earth metals and critical minerals. Lithium, cobalt, and manganese are needed to produce batteries. Silicon and gallium are used in the production of semiconductors. Most household appliances and electronic gadgets require rare earth metals.
Smartphones, without which modern people can no longer imagine their lives, are at least 40% made of metals, including copper, aluminum, lithium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, tin, and in expensive models — gold, platinum, silver, tungsten, and titaniumRare earth metals such as neodymium, terbium, and dysprosium are indispensable. They are used to make your smartphone vibrate and have a touchscreen, as well as many other features that everyone seems to be used to and take for granted.
Neodymium, yttrium, samarium, erbium, and europium in combination with iron boride are used to produce alloys with high magnetic and coercive strength to create permanent magnets needed in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors.
These materials, along with cobalt, nickel, graphite, and lithium, are used to produce batteries for electric cars, smartphones, and computers, night vision devices, data storage devices, industrial lasers, aerospace alloys, and components in nuclear reactors.
However, mining rare earth metals is complicated by the fact that although most of them are present in sufficient quantities in the Earth’s interior and on the ocean floor, they hardly exist in their pure form. They are part of other ores and mineral deposits. Rare earths are often accompanied in rocks by radioactive uranium and thorium. The difficulty of access and low concentration of rare earths often make their extraction economically unfeasible.
Between 1965 and 1995, the United States was the world’s largest producer and supplier of rare earths, thanks to the Mountain Pass deposit near San Bernardino, California. However, in 1998, the deposit was shut down due to market instability, a series of bankruptcies of the companies that owned it, and numerous complaints about environmental pollution. Production was partially restored only 20 years later.
The use of the Mountain Pass field, which is located near the Mojave Desert National Reserve, resulted in the discharge of about 2.3 thousand liters of radioactive and toxic wastewater into the desert soil.
The offending company was ordered to pay a fine of $1.4 million. However, it later received a new permit to extract rare earths from this deposit.
Since the late 1980s and up to the present, China has been the absolute leader in the extraction and processing of rare earths and critical metals and minerals.
China produces more than 60% of all rare earth metals in the world. Moreover, although the Democratic Republic of Congo is the leader in cobalt production, for example, and Australia in lithium, while Indonesia produces the most nickel, China is the absolute leader in terms of processing these metals
At the same time, China is also one of the most bitter examples of how, in the pursuit of promising resources and global leadership, local authorities have for decades neglected to protect the environment. This includes the devastating effects of rare earth mining.
According to the US Geological Survey, in 2023, China mined 240 thousand metric tons of rare earth ore. For comparison, the United States produced 43 thousand metric tons during this period.
The Bayan Obo mine in Inner Mongolia is one of the largest rare earth deposits in the world with huge deposits of niobium, iron, uranium, and thorium. The Baotou processing plant is located nearby. The process of extracting ore from rocks releases a number of toxic chemical elements.
According to the China Association of Rare Earth Elements, each ton of rare earths mined produces 9.6 to 12 thousand cubic meters of waste in the form of gas containing concentrated dust, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid. In addition, 75 cubic meters of acidic wastewater and about a ton of radioactive waste are generated.
Julie Klinger, an associate professor of geography at the University of Delaware in the United States, in her book Rare Earth Frontiers: From the Earth’s Interior to Lunar Landscapes», notes that local residents of this remote area of China have been diagnosed with various forms of cancer. This is caused by the release of radioactive sludge and other pollutants in the process of rare earth mining and processing.
The extraction of rare earths at the Bayan-Obo mine also led to the poisoning of soil and water with toxic elements, which were then absorbed by agricultural plants and ingested by livestock and local residents.
Klinger writes in his book that the locals of the area could often be recognized by the characteristic skin lesions caused by arsenic poisoning. In addition, most of them suffered from bone deformities and tooth decay.
According to some estimates, the artificial Baotou Lake is filled with 180 million metric tons of radioactive sludge. It is located just 10 km from the Huanghe River, which serves as a water source for more than 100 million people.
By the beginning of the 21st century, the scale of the Bayan Obo environmental disaster had become so threatening that the Chinese authorities could no longer turn a blind eye. Over the past two decades, some of the affected areas have been restored, but the health of local residents has been undermined for generations to come.
However, after 2010, China focused on the extraction of strategically important resources in other countries. In particular, Chinese companies control a significant part of mining in Africa, including у Democratic Republic of the Congo.
President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Beijing of profiting from the extraction of strategic resources in Africa without paying the country the promised $6.2 billion under the 2008 minerals-for-infrastructure deal. Chinese companies have been repeatedly accused of mistreating workers and violating environmental standards.
In addition, China has been actively investing in nickel mining in Indonesia, rare earths and lithium in Argentina and Chile.
The non-governmental organization Business & Human Rights Resource Center, in the period from 2013 to 2020, was fixed more than 230 complaints about human rights violations at Chinese-owned mining and metallurgical enterprises. Mining companies in China responded to these complaints in less than a quarter of cases.
How to reports According to the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), Chinese investments in Indonesia’s mining industry bring only minimal profits to local companies, which are not enough to compensate for environmental damage.
Indonesian Commission for the Eradication of Corruption issued a warningThe report said that Chinese companies create conditions for bribing local officials and seek to ease environmental regulations.
The CIPE also noted that Chinese investment in mining in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries has been associated with numerous instances of corruption, smuggling of migrants, regulatory violations, and tax evasion.
In Latin America, Chinese mining companies have faced numerous accusations of violating the rights of local workers
How to note representatives of the International Federation for Human Rights, the violations include refusal to disclose the results of mandatory environmental studies and damage to local ecosystems, as well as — illegal eviction of indigenous people.
As Beijing has imposed severe restrictions on the export of rare earths and strategically important metals amid the trade confrontation between the US and China. The struggle for control over strategic resources in the world between the leading countries will only intensify. In such circumstances, it is unlikely that anyone will pay much attention to environmental compliance.
In January 2024, the Norwegian authorities were the first in the world to decide to grant permission to private companies for the extraction of valuable resources on the seabed over an area of 280 thousand square kilometers. In November 2023, MEPs called on Norway to abandon this. Mining companies are particularly interested in the so-called polymetallic minerals that are scattered in large quantities on the seabed and contain mixtures of iron and manganese oxides and hydroxides, as well as nickel and cobalt oxides.
These potato-sized formations contain all the necessary components used in the production of electric vehicles in sufficient quantities. They are particularly attractive for mining because they lie almost on the surface of the seabed and do not require the destruction of rocks or the seabed itself.
The most explored area for further production is the Pacific seabed in the Clarion-Clipperton zone at a depth of 3.5 to 5.5 meters near Hawaii.
The basin in the central Indian Ocean and the seabed off the Cook Islands, Kiribati and French Polynesia atolls in the South Pacific are also of potential interest for mining.
Representatives of the mining companies propose to use something like a huge vacuum cleaner that will suck up these polymetallic minerals and deliver them to the surface with a hose. However, this will inevitably destroy all the inhabitants of this ecosystem, including bacteria.
As Sabine Gollner, a senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Marine Research, warns, the destroyed biodiversity may not be restored because polymetallic minerals contain manganese hydroxides, which are essential for local ecosystems. The minerals themselves grow only a few millimeters in about a million years.
Possible exploitation of deepwater deposits is regulated by the International Seabed Authority. It has already signed 31 contracts for mineral exploration.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining, as too little is known about its environmental impact.
In any case, the bitter experience of onshore mining of rare earth metals and strategically important minerals should serve as a reminder that no amount of long-term progress and new technological advances will bring back the lost ecosystems. Humanity still depends more than on electric cars and gadgets.
